A French labor court has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay around €60 million to Kylian Mbappe after siding with the forward in his long-running financial battle with his former club over a contract dispute
Mbappe left PSG last summer after 7 seasons at the club, ending one of the most high-profile relationships in European football. Not long after that, he launched a lawsuit, claiming PSG had deliberately held back part of his pay in the final stretch of his contract.
The verdict, which the Paris labor court issued earlier today, has to do with unpaid wages and bonuses from the final few months of Mbappe’s contract in 2024, just before he left PSG to join Real Madrid on a free transfer.
The judges found that PSG failed to pay Mbappe’s salary for April, May and June 2024, as well as a few of the contractually agreed bonuses. That included some big payments often referred to as loyalty, ethics or signing-related bonuses.
While the exact final bill varies depending on how each bonus is calculated, it’s still a massive €60 million, with some estimates putting it somewhere just under €61 million.
PSG had argued that some of the payments weren’t owed or that they came with conditions attached. But the judges shut down that line of argument, ruling that these sums were clearly part of Mbappe’s contract and should have been paid.
The case had already gone in front of the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) which earlier on ruled that PSG owed Mbappe €55 million. But PSG chose to ignore that ruling and chose to challenge it in court, which is how we got to this point.
This verdict is a big win for Mbappe but it doesn’t mean this whole mess is over yet. The judgement only covers the unpaid salaries and bonuses, leaving all these other claims and counterclaims that both sides have been trading back and forth over the past year hanging in the air.
In fact, PSG is expected to appeal today’s verdict. The PSG leadership has always denied doing anything wrong and claims Mbappe didn’t meet certain internal agreements during his time at the club.
Whatever the final outcome of this legal battle might end up being, this case is already shaping out to stand as one of the most significant contractual disputes in the history of football.
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